Playground Development

Playground Update August 2016

Well, it’s all been happening here at the school. After a phenomenal year of fundraising, the KS2 playground has been a hive of activity over the summer as the new equipment has been installed. Although our fundraising was solely to improve the KS2 playground, we have also managed to add some new equipment in KS1. We hope you like it and the children enjoy their new playgrounds!

Thank you for your generosity last year – we feel that everyone in the school has played a part in making this happen. The Dinner & Auction exceeded all expectations and allowed us to go ahead and book the work. (PS If you haven’t yet seen Jay Rowden’s photos of the evening do have a look. He has kindly offered to let people download images here using password ‘allfarthing’).

We are also extremely grateful for the support of local businesses who have helped with raffle and auction donations, financial contributions and help in kind. We couldn’t support our school without your generosity!

Jacksons Estate Agents for sponsoring and helping to organise our 2016 Dinner and Auction and for sponsoring three new table tennis tables.

Activ Camps for providing the very biggest inflatable and sponsoring the 2016 Sponsored Bounce

And Ardmore Construction for clearing our playground and rebuilding our decking creating a new stage area for the children.

Playground Update June 2016

Things have started happening in the KS2 Playground!
During May half-term we were able to get the playground project underway, with the assistance of Ardmore Construction. Ardmore are currently building Phase 1 of the Ram Quarter Brewery development and very kindly offered to help us by clearing the old seating cabins and equipment from the playground and replacing our old decking under the trees. This has saved us a huge amount of time and money and has allowed us to re-tarmac the playground during the half term break.

Thank you very much for your support Ardmore!

Playground Update April 2016

Fundraising
Our fundraising remains on target and we still plan to carry out the work during the summer. The children raised an enormous £5000 with their Sponsored Bounce and we are hoping to recover £800 in Gift Aid in the next few weeks. Come Dine With Me raised a further £1048 (and was a great deal of fun), and a number of you have very kindly continued contributing by direct debit via Localgiving. Once all the funds are in, our total raised for the playground now stands at:

£30,000!

This leaves us with a further £20,000 to raise by early June when the order for equipment needs to be finalised. We hope to raise much of this from the Dinner and Auction at the Town Hall on 19th May. Jacksons Estate Agents are very kindly sponsoring this event and are helping us create a very special evening. Tickets are now on sale, so start organising your tables! In the meantime if you have anything you can donate please do drop us a line at dinnerandauction16@gmail.com

We are still applying for grants, so if you hear of any funding we can apply for please let us know. You can also help by organising your own class fundraising coffee morning, dinner or fun event.

Volunteer Day
The cost of the project has been higher than we originally anticipated, but we plan to keep costs down by carrying out tarmac works during May half term. We can also keep costs down by removing the old seating cabins and equipment from the KS2 playground ourselves. We would therefore like to ask for your help (again) by asking members of the school community to give up a few hours to help, or to help with the loan of equipment.
We will need:
a skip – can you donate the use of a skip or offer a discounted hire?
power washers x2
wheelbarrows
tools for dismantling
lots and lots of parent power!

Currently we plan to try and do this after school on a Friday in May 4-8pm. If you can give up some time to help with this please e-mail us

Final Design
Thank you for sending us your comments about the three shortlisted designs. The playground steering committee took all your feedback on board and made a recommendation to the school to select the Sovereign design. The Governors and Senior Management team have accepted our recommendation and approved the final design, so we can now share it with you. We hope you like it!

To complete the project as designed, we do need to raise the additional £20,000 otherwise elements will be omitted to reduce the overall cost.

Playground Fundraising Update February 2016.

A huge thank you to all the children that took part in the Sponsored Bounce on 5th February. Their enthusiasm and bouncing raised £5000 for the playground fund. Thank you to all the friends and family that sponsored the Bounce, the school really appreciates your support.

In addition, Come Dine With Me…Allfarthing Style raised another £1048, but more importantly everyone that took part had a fantastic evening and made new friends. Thank you to our hosts for volunteering to cook and invite people into their homes, and thank you diners for the generous tips!

All of the is brings our fund-raising total to just short of £30,000 as we return to school after half term. The playground steering committee met over half term, reviewed comments form the school community and made a final selection for a design for the playground. The PTA, Governors and School Management Team will now review the recommendation and design and we hope to reveal it to you very soon.

Playground Fundraising Update December 2015.

We have made a very successful start to our fundraising, please click on the link below for all the details:

On behalf of the school and PTA an enormous Thank You to everyone for taking part Localgiving’s Grow Your Tenner fundraising in October. Donations exceeded £5,000 and with the matched funding and gift aid we raised £11,000. The school have also donated a further £5000 taking us just over the £17,000 mark!

What’s Next?
We can still benefit from Gift Aid for online donations at LocalGiving and we will be taking part in #givingtuesday on 1st December, when Localgiving will be matching £5 donations for one day only.